Asbury Park

Asbury Park is a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey. It was incorporated on 26 March 1874 as a borough and as a city on 28 February 1893, and it was developed as a residential seaside resort and named for the Methodist bishop Francis Asbury. In the decades after World War II, surrounding farm communities gave way to tracts of suburban houses, convincing the city's middle-class African-Americans and whites to move into newer houses with spacious yards. With the opening of the Garden State Parkway in 1947 and the opening of the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown in 1960, Asbury Park became less of a shopping attraction. The opening of Great Adventure in 1974 drew people away from the aging boardwalks of Asbury Park, and race riots on 4 July 1970 left 180 people (including 15 state troopers) injured and the shopping district on the West Side completely destroyed. From 2002 onward, Asbury Park underwent a revival due to a burgeoning art industry, and the Casino walkway and several boardwalk pavilions reopened in the years after 2005. In 2016, Asbury Park had a population of 15,722 people. During the 2016 presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the town with 81.7% of the vote.